News - Colombia

A little report, issued quietly in the middle of June, marked the moment when the Conservatives reneged on an agreement to study how a free-trade deal in Colombia might affect human rights.

It’s an odd blind spot for the Tories, who, after all, like to argue that trade is good for ordinary people in developing countries. The Harper government has recently started pushing aid projects aimed at showing that the mining industry can bring a better life to people in Africa and Latin America – and Canada-Colombia business, after all, is dominated by mining.

The main finding of the Harper government’s first complete human rights impact assessment of the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement (CCOFTA), tabled without almost anyone noticing in the House last week, is that there really isn’t any point in doing a human rights impact assessment of the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement.

Colombia is paying a high price for the boom in mining, which is producing unrecognized costs due to the preeminence of a narrow and deficient economic philosophy, according to a new book on the subject.

The Colombian minister of Mines and Energy, Federico Renjifo Vélez, will be at the International Economic Forum of the Americas in Montreal this week. On Tuesday, he will be attending a working breakfast titled Doing Business with Colombia. The minister’s visit comes on the heels of a May 2013 report issued by the Colombian comptroller general that links the extractive industry in Colombia to armed conflict and human rights violations.

This summer PASC and members of the Red de Hermandad y Solidaridad con Colombia (Redher - Colombia Friendship and Solidarity Network) will be organizing a Popular Tribunal against Colombia's extractive industry policies. The Tribunal is a chance to put foreign mining, gas and hydroelectric companies on trial for the pillage of Colombia's natural resources, as well as for fueling political violence against union members, communities affected by mega-development projects, and environmental and social activists.

Today, May 30, 2013, activists from the Mining Injustice Solidarity Network made their way into the Kensington Room of the King Edward Hotel, in Toronto, where the Annual General Meeting of Pacific Rubiales was taking place. They handed out a press release from the Union of Oil Workers (USO), announcing the Colombian union's lawsuit against Pacific Rubiales for violations of the right to freedom of association.

Bogota - May 29, 2013- The President of the Unión Sindical Obrera (USO), Rodolfo Vecino, confirmed today that the union would file suit against the multinational oil company, Pacific Rubiales Energy, for alleged violations of the freedom of association, the freedom of assembly and conspiracy to commit a crime. Mr. Vecino added that the USO would officially file the suit at the Colombian Public Prosecutor's Office (Fiscalía General de la Nación) on Thursday, May 30, 2013 at 10 am.

Corrupt government officials been systematically and illegally granting land to criminals and wealthy people across Colombia for the past five years, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

Sources within the ministry denounced a “mafia” within government land distribution organization Incoder, working to illegally distribute land to convicted criminals and wealthy Colombians posing as peasants and victims, who the law specifies the land is for.